Monday, January 10, 2011

Snow, snow, snow

It doesn't take much for ongoing small snow events to start to add up.

When I was done teaching skiing on January 2nd, things weren't looking very good. All of the natural snow trails were closed and many trails were brown. We'd enjoyed a few great days of spring-like skiing conditions, but the thin base on the mountain had been exposed, and things weren't looking so good.

All last week, the snow guns were going non-stop, but it seemed like the mountain got a few inches of snow most days/nights as well. I'm guessing that the summit saw close to 3 feet of snow in the past 8 days or so.

Saturday morning trail-checks were kind of interesting. A lot of the snow from the snow guns was of very variable texture, while the fresh natural snow was very fluffy. On trails where snow was being made, you had to be very careful with your turns. You could easily be flying in natural fluffy snow, make a turn toward the snow guns, and end up moving too fast in very dense snow. The word of the day was caution - keep speed down and expect variations in the snow.

I had a small class on Saturday - only five of my nine girls showed up. I taught the third lesson in a four-part progression that I've been working on. Basically, I have used the past two weekends to teach three individual lessons, with my plan being that we would put everything together on Sunday morning. The less for Saturday was fairly simple, so we spent much of the rest of the day just free skiing as a group.

On Sunday morning, seven girls showed up. I went back through the previous three lessons quickly, and then basically asked the girls to do all three things at once. I was surprised at how easily they were able to do it and I like the results that I saw. I then told them that these weren't absolute techniques, but rather things to be used to help make better turns, when appropriate. For the rest of the day, I reminded the girls periodically about the lesson, but we mostly skied. It was a cold and windy day, and no one wanted to be outside for more than 2-3 consecutive runs.

And just like that, my weekend was over, at least the skiing part of it.

I did enjoy some tasty low-carb meals over the weekend as well.

Friday night, I cooked ribeye steaks with bernaise sauce. I added a salad and that was it.

On Saturday, we had a slow-cooked leg of lamb, braised all day in a mixture of onions, garlic, tomatoes, vermouth, bay leaves and tarragon. After the lamb finished, I reduced the cooking liquid and added some butter and served the sauce over the lamb. Again, I added a salad.

On Sunday night, my wife cooked dinner while I was skiing. She made a pasta sauce with some Italian sausage. She then roasted some eggplant and we ate the sauce over the roasted eggplant with a little bit of Reggiano parmesan cheese.

Tonight, after being away from CrossFit for two weeks, I'll return. I spent one week teaching skiing and then another week being sick. I'll definitely do some lower level workouts at CrossFit until I get back to full strength.

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